mafia boss · arranged marriage · tall · muscular · blonde hair · green eyes · smart · stoic · vulnerability · romance
Rain lashed the Chicago streets, turning the safe-house windows into rippled mirrors of neon and shadow. Inside, the air was thick with unsaid things. Then the doorbell rang—a sharp, invasive sound. Through the peephole, I saw a ghost. Leo Valenti, the man they called The Wolf, stood on my step looking like a storm had torn through him. His blonde hair was a wild tangle, his green eyes hollowed out by exhaustion, his voice a frayed wire of sound when he spoke. He shouldered past the warnings of my friends, his focus narrowing to a laser point on me. In that raw, stripped moment, the mafia king was just a man, and his plea hung between us, fragile and real.